Recent advances in communications technology have enabled communication systems to provide ultra-wideband communication systems. Among the numerous benefits of ultra-wideband communication systems are increased channelization, resistance to jamming and low probability of detection.
The benefits of ultra-wideband systems have been demonstrated in part by an emerging, revolutionary ultra-wideband technology called impulse radio communications systems (hereinafter called impulse radio). Impulse radio was first fully described in a series of patents, including U.S. Pat. No. 4,641,317 (issued Feb. 3, 1987), U.S. Pat. No. 4,813,057 (issued Mar. 14, 1989), U.S. Pat. No. 4,979,186 (issued Dec. 18, 1990), U.S. Pat. No. 5,363,108 (issued Nov. 8, 1994) and U.S. Pat. No. 4,743,906 (issued May 10, 1988) all to Larry W. Fullerton. A second generation of impulse radio patents includes U.S. Pat. No. 5,677,927 (issued Oct. 14, 1997), U.S. Pat. No. 5,687,169 (issued Nov. 11, 1997) and co-pending application Ser. No. 08/761,602 (filed Dec. 6, 1996; now allowed) to Fullerton et al. These patent documents are incorporated herein by reference.
Basic impulse radio transmitters emit short Gaussian monocycle pulses with tightly controlled pulse-to-pulse intervals. Impulse radio systems use pulse position modulation, which is a form of time modulation in which the value of each instantaneous sample of a modulating signal is caused to modulate the position of a pulse in time.
For impulse radio communications, the pulse-to-pulse interval is varied on a pulse-by-pulse basis by two components: an information component and a pseudo-random (PN) code component. Generally, spread spectrum systems make use of PN codes to spread the information signal over a significantly wider band of frequencies. A spread spectrum receiver correlates these signals to retrieve the original information signal. Unlike spread spectrum systems, the PN code for impulse radio communications is not necessary for energy spreading because the monocycle pulses themselves have an inherently wide bandwidth. Instead, the pseudo-random code of an impulse radio system is used for channelization, energy smoothing in the frequency domain, and jamming resistance (interference rejection.)
Generally speaking, an impulse radio receiver is a homodyne receiver with a cross correlator front end. The front end coherently converts an electromagnetic pulse train of monocycle pulses to a baseband signal in a single stage. The data rate of the impulse radio transmission is typically a fraction of the periodic timing signal used as a time base. Each data bit time position usually modulates many of the transmitted pulses. This yields a modulated, coded timing signal that comprises a train of identically shaped pulses for each single data bit. The cross correlator of the impulse radio receiver integrates multiple pulses to recover the transmitted information.
In an impulse radio communication system, information is typically modulated by pulse-position modulation. That is, the time at which each pulse is transmitted is varied slightly from the predetermined pulse-to-pulse interval time. One factor limiting the effectiveness of the communication channel is the accuracy with which the pulses can be positioned. More accurate positioning of pulses can allow the communication engineer to achieve enhanced utilization of the communication channel.
For radar position determination and motion sensors, including impulse radio radar systems, precise pulse positioning is crucial to achieving high accuracy and resolution. Limitations in resolution of existing systems are partially a result of the limitations in the ability to encode a transmitted signal with a precisely timed sequence. Therefore, enhancements to the precision with which timing signals can be produced can result in a higher-resolution position and motion sensing system.
Impulse radio communications and radar are but two examples of technologies that would benefit from a precise timing generator. A high-precision timing generator would also find application in any system where precise positioning of a timing signal is required.
Generating such high precision pulses, however, is quite difficult. In general, high precision time bases are needed to create pulses of short duration having tightly controlled pulse-to-pulse intervals. Currently available analog or digital integrated circuit timers are not capable of creating such high precision pulses. Typical impulse radio timer systems are relatively complex, expensive, board level devices that are difficult to produce. A small, low power, easily produced, timer device would enable many new impulse radio-based products and bring their advantages to the end users.